The film stars Peggie Castle, Arthur Franz, Marsha Hunt and Don Haggerty.

The narrative concerns a young woman who, under the influence of a devil cult, is possessed by the spirit of her husband's first wife, who had died six years earlier.

A happy vacation along California's rocky coast for a pregnant Mandy Anthony (Peggie Castle), her husband Dick (Arthur Franz) and her sister Kate Hazelton (Marsha Hunt) is ruined when Mandy has a seizure, loses consciousness and miscarries.

Dick, upset by the reunion, tells Kate that Mrs. Bradley "was a strange, evil woman - Felicia, too" and that he was a fool to not face the truth.

Dick invites his friends John Mitchell (Don Haggerty) and Molly Prentiss (Evelyn Scott) to the vacation house for cocktails.

The next day, Kate is at John's house when neighbor Nancy Cordell (Marianne Stewart) drops by.

She casually tells Kate that she and the Bradleys are members of Maître Victor Renall's (Otto Reichow) devil cult, as was Felicia.

9, a DVD released in 2002 by Something Weird Video[16] Both contemporary and modern reviews are difficult to find for Back from the Dead.

BoxOffice magazine's anonymous reviewer in 1957 offered little more than a brief plot description, pointing out that Felicia "belonged to a weird, blood-letting cult in which her mother is still active."

The magazine's "Exploitips" for drumming up business suggested that exhibitors "have a woman dressed as a zombi (sic) wander about the streets near the theatre bearing a sign with the picture's title, such as: I am 'Back from the Dead.'

"[17] BoxOffice summarized the film's ratings from its usual sources in its weekly "Review Digest" feature.

[19] Marsha Hunt, who played Kate Hazelton, was interviewed by American film critic Tom Weaver about Back from the Dead.

Weaver writes that the movie was an attempt by Regal Films to "cash in" on the "intense public interest in reincarnation" which at the time centered on the "widely publicized story" of a Colorado woman "who claimed (after 'hypnotic regression') to be a nineteenth-century Irishwoman named Bridey Murphy.

"[20] More than 170,000 copies of the book The Search for Bridey Murphy were sold and "for several months reincarnation became the subject of songs, nightclub acts, conversation and motion pictures.

He writes that "the craggy coastline and brooding narration ... sets a melancholy tone and effectively creates a feeling of impending doom and inescapable disaster" and that Warren uses the rocky seaside setting "as a pointed symbol of unstoppable forces and malevolent intent."

Unfortunately, he says, the film then "backs itself into a corner, thanks to its small-scale production and poorly-constructed script, which offers only a cheap satanic ritual, some halfhearted black magic mumbo-jumbo and a decidedly anticlimactic climax ...."[6] British critic Phil Hardy also takes issue with the script, calling it "cliché-ridden ... muddled, murky and a good deal less gripping" than the novel on which the film is based.

But he singles out Hunt for credit, writing that as "the possessed woman's sister - in effect, the heroine - [she] gives a better performance than the circumstances warrant.